PinkCat: Running in the Shade “Two for One” (A different sort of SR campaign report)

2 November, 2019

To understand what is going on here, you had best read the first PinkCat: Running in the Shade post, but short summary, this is a campaign report for our Shadowrun campaign set in NorCal through the filter of a cartoon made by one of the team members.

Episode Forty Four: Two for One

Guest Starring: Clawz, DoubleUp, Gimmick, and Tora.

The gang is asked to help out two of the students, twin ocelots as it happens, who have become estranged and bring them back together. So, lots of comedic failed attempts to get the two back together always backfiring terribly . . . until at the end of the episode the twins bump into each other in the cafeteria line and bones over all the stupid tricks people have been trying to pull on them. The team collapses exhausted and all’s well that ends well or something.

What really happened:

The meet takes place in Lola’s Currywurst Emporium, our Mr Johnson is younger Ork in an old, cheap suit with troll guard with state of the art enhancements. The task, insert “program patch” into primary onsite and backup offsite production systems at electronics manufacturer, Takshash Heavy Industries located in San Bruno. It is tricky as both insertions need to be done within minutes of each other.

Bladez and Gidget infiltrated the manufacturing side as workers while we scouted the corporate offices for weakness. PinkCat also analyzed the program patch and realized that it would slightly realign the sensor relays the chips work with making their measurement minutely off, to what purpose she is not exactly sure.

Accessing the fabricator’s data seems like the easy side of thing, we have the program on a self-uploading stick that should read like a standard update, we just have to get it to the right point. Getting into the corporate headquarters is the trickier one, given the timing window, most of our standard cons will not work.

So, we decide to rely on distraction and sneakiness for the fab and just for for a direct smash and grab for the HQ. Bladez makes a scene, which including slashing his foreman with a box cutter, before being thrown out by security, while that is going on Gidget gets the program uploaded. More or less simultaneously, Double-Tap and Toru, take down the guards and breach the doors, messily but successfully, to access one of the work stations. PinkCat runs a wide net data steal, which acts as cover for inserting the program patch, and then our raiders beat feet just shortly ahead of the police.

We have to wait until the production run begins before getting paid, which is a little nerve-wracking as it in a new employer but they come through with the promised payment. And PinkCat tries to work out how to expose the flawed chips without revealing that she knows they are compromised.